


in heart of hearts

by salakavala



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), King Thor (Marvel), Loki and Thor Are Not Related, M/M, Pining, Romance, king and scheherazade elements, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 23:23:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18537571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salakavala/pseuds/salakavala
Summary: Tell me a story, Thor asks, as he has on many nights before.Alas, my king, says Loki softly, It is dawn.





	in heart of hearts

*

 

Dawn is still sleeping when the king shudders and fills Loki with his release. His weight is grounding around and inside Loki – his breaths are heavy on Loki’s lips, and Loki drinks them in greedily, not yet quite himself after another night of the king’s intense love. Everything about Thor is heated: his skin, his breathing, his eyes when they lock on Loki in a sea of strangers, and his words when he spreads Loki underneath him at nights.

Loki shivers when the king pulls out of him and rolls to the side, one arm sliding along Loki’s pale belly but not slipping off. He likes to hold. It’s one of the first things Loki learnt about him.

In his royal canopy bed Thor looks not like the man sitting upon the golden throne of Asgard. Here, in the dim privacy of his bedchamber, with his seed still burning inside of Loki, the king looks sated, serene. Open, as he watches Loki over the plush pillows. Here, he looks but an ordinary man.

Loki rarely sees him as anything but; the king’s bedwarmer can hardly have any business in the golden halls of the palace, where Thor holds his daily court. But here, in his splendid royal chambers, Thor is Loki’s alone, until the sun rises once again and Loki must slink back into the rooms that are his for yet another day. From there he will be fetched again come evening: either by the king’s valet to lead him to the king’s chambers, or by the palace guards to vacate the rooms for a new inhabitant.

It has only been the valet, so far.

Loki disperses such thoughts. It’s not dawn yet. The sun is sleeping still.

The king watches him with a slow smile, thumb stroking his face as if Loki meant the world and all its wonders to him. Perhaps, in the darkness, it’s even true. Or so Loki likes to pretend. He has always excelled at pretending. With Thor laying his head on his lap, it would be hard not to.

“Tell me a story,” Thor asks, as he has on many nights before.

Loki runs his fingers through the king’s shorn hair, and does.

***

If asked, Loki wouldn’t be able to name what pulled him to Asgard when he left Jotunheim. With all the realms of the Nine open to him through his secret pathways, the wisdom of his choosing the Realm Eternal is certainly debatable; the open animosity between Asgard and Jotunheim is age-old and continues to show no signs of thawing.

Perhaps it’s the famous library of Asgard that lured Loki in; but then, the great library on Vanaheim is said to easily rival that of Asgard’s and has a far more extensive collection on seidr besides. Perhaps it’s the massive palace and its golden spires that Loki wanted to see; but he has always found the idea of half a city coated in gold somewhat distasteful. Perhaps, then – and most likely so – Loki found himself in Asgard for nothing but a whim, that twinkling of curiosity that has so often dictated his decisions before, with not always ideal consequences. Because even Jotunheim, reclusive as she is, has heard the rumours.

In the great halls of Laufey's palace the names of the Aesir kings are rarely tolerated, but Loki never saw the point in restricting himself to the palace area alone. Travelling merchants in Jotunheim are few, but if there is a place where one might find them on any realm, it's in the city's biggest taverns. Utgard only has one, and there Loki used to spend many of his evenings, listening to tidings and to gossip, hungry for any rumours outside his own realm. And as the years passed, one particular topic kept resurfacing every time a merchant or a rare dignitary visited Jotunheim: king Thor of Asgard, and his insatiable appetites.

There were a great number of bits and pieces of information circulating about the Asgardian king, but in the end, they all arrived in the same point: every few days or weeks the king takes a lover, only to discard them for a new one soon after. The rest is but flavouring: the king is a devoted lover for those few days or even weeks, and showers his favourites with silks and diamonds. The king is a sexual deviant, a predator, whose hunger knows no limits and from whose eye no one is spared, be it a peasant or a warrior. The king is a cruel man with a thunderous temper, and the reason why he changes lovers with such frequency is that he executes those who dissatisfy him – and no one can satisfy him for long. He chops off heads with little remorse, only to vacate the space for another unfortunate beauty for another night to come.

Loki is by no means a great beauty. His natural slight stature of a runt has gained him nothing but ridicule among his kin, and his blue skin and red eyes would repulse the Aesir even without the hostility between their realms. And so, when Loki shifted into his Aesir form on arriving in Asgard, so as to not be recognised as Laufey’s get and end up executed for trespassing, he never imagined that his appearance might attract anyone, let alone the king himself.

But the king’s hungry eye did fall upon him, and, like all the others before him, Loki said yes.

***

_The king was facing a difficult choice, now. War was coming. He himself was going to be the harbinger of it, for the blood of his father had been spilled and drained to the last drop, and it demanded vengeance._

_But the king had not enough troops. To march would mean offering his men up for a massacre, but to stay would cost their respect for him. The king agonised over his choice for the most part of the night, for at the first light of dawn, he would have to voice his decision._

_It's how his foster brother found him, in the darkest hours before the dawn. He was the king’s blood brother in all but name, taken into the family as a ward by the king’s father as a boy. He held nothing but admiration for his king and his brother, and now, in the darkest hour, he had an offer to make._

“ _Send me to my father,” he spoke to the king, one brother to another. “We have not spoken in years, but I am his firstborn son. He will hear me, and he will aid you in your endeavours. Send me to him, and I will return, and bring with me his ships and his men. We will prevail, together.”_

_The king listened to his counsel, and agreed to it, for he trusted him. They shook hands, as brothers, and so one brother departed as the other remained._

“ _I will be but a month,” the king’s brother yet promised. “Look out for a message when the moon turns.” And he went._

_The king waited, but when the moon turned, the answer never came. His brother had betrayed him._

Loki stops and looks out of the window to the slightly paling sky. Dawn is waking.

Thor realises that Loki has cut the tale rather than paused for effect. He lifts his head from Loki’s lap and props himself on his elbow to better peer at Loki’s face.

“Loki! You cannot stop there!”

“Alas, my king,” says Loki softly, withdrawing his fingers from Thor's hair. “It is dawn.”

Thor groans and drops his head onto a pillow. It’s so fluffy that his head sinks into it almost entirely. “How is it that the days drag on forever, but the night is never long enough?”

“That’s what you get for living in the Sunshine Realm,” Loki remarks airily. “I imagine on Jotunheim it would be quite the reverse.”

“I don’t believe it. Night is too short wherever you’ll be leaving me in the morning.”

Loki only hums. Thor, of course, laments the shortness of the night with the ease of a man who craves to sate his amorous desires. Nevertheless, he isn’t wrong; the sun always wakes too early for one who doesn’t know if the dawning day will be the one to see the king’s eye finally catch on another beauty to keep him company through his nights.

Loki looks out into the dawn. He must go, before the sun emerges from the waters surrounding Asgard.

The king pulls him back into bed by the waist when Loki attempts to rise. He kisses Loki’s palm, and his beard scratches the vulnerable skin of the inner forearm as he climbs with kisses to Loki’s elbow, his upper arm, his shoulder. From there he trails his open-mouthed kisses on Loki’s throat, on the nape of his neck. There is a spot there, right below the hairline, that Thor has discovered makes Loki shiver when touched, and he has taken to exploiting this weakness whenever he means to be persuasive. For a reason Loki cannot name, it’s this spot that feels the most intimate to him in spite of everything he and Thor have done together.

Thor makes thorough love to his neck, before licking into Loki’s ear.

“My king,” Loki pleads, but doesn’t resist; is powerless to.

“Uh-uh,” Thor admonishes him, dragging his beard over Loki’s clavicle.

Loki's eyes flutter shut. “ _Thor._ ”

Thor rewards him with a hand sneaking down to his cock. Somehow it’s stirring even after the night they’ve just shared.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“I must go,” Loki tries again, but, weakened by Thor’s touch as he is, sounds unconvincing even in his own ears.

“Always in such a hurry to leave me,” Thor mutters, mouth insistent on Loki’s loved raw and painfully tender nipples. He works his hand faster, rougher than Loki’s overworked body can endure without making a sound.

“Why is it, little bird?” Thor demands, rolling on top of Loki and settling between his open thighs. Loki is still slick and loose from the king’s earlier attentions – Thor pushes right in. “Always eager to fly from my bed. Does the king not please you?”

He makes a gentle joke of it, but in truth he knows full well why Loki must leave. Public knowledge as the king’s constantly changing bedwarmers are, it’s not proper that one such should be caught in the king’s personal chambers, in a bed that should be reserved only for the future queen. Loki must be dressed and ready to leave by the time Thor’s valet will come to escort him into his rooms, before the palace properly wakes.

Loki rocks on the pillows with the king’s thrusts, opening for Thor’s ravenous kisses, letting him twine his fingers with Loki’s. Letting him spew his sweet endearments, listening to his hollow nonsense that every previous lover has no doubt heard from letter to letter. You take me so well, Loki, no one takes my cock as you do. You were made for me, darling, as I was made for you--

Loki spills, and milks Thor for his own release. Thor kisses his cries from his lips, drinks in every sound he makes. Loki latches on the king’s mouth and wishes he could breathe Thor’s groans as he breathes air.

He has to dress in a hurry, without the time to clean himself. Thor’s seed trickles down his thighs beneath his tunic as the king’s annoyingly expressionless valet leads him into his own chambers.

***

Outside the palace area, Loki loves the marketplace the most. Unlike in Utgard, where trading is temperate and haggling considered ill-mannered, in Asgard everything is bustling with life and colours with chattering crowds and eager vendors trying to lure an idle browser in. Loki loves stepping in and losing himself in the flow of people and the heat and the intriguing scents that drift from various food stalls and fill his lungs when he breathes deep.

He loves looking a little deeper, too, noting which seller eyes another with barely concealed disdain, or who in a large brood of children is the black sheep of the family, or who smiles at a happy couple with jealousy in their eyes. There is always more under the surface than first meets the eye, regardless the realm, and uncovering little secrets has always been a point of interest to Loki. When one is very small and generally unwanted in a world of giants, seeing and hearing things one isn’t supposed to see or hear easily becomes a subconscious habit – one that Loki embraced at an early age. Everyone needs to have pastime activities, after all.

Here, in his Aesir form on Asgard’s streets, Loki finds he enjoys himself like he rarely did on Jotunheim: he is free to roam as he pleases, without sullen glares or mocking half-hidden smiles prickling at his skin wherever he sets his foot. Here he is no one, not because he’s different, but because he is the same as everyone else. Loki has been given strict orders by the king’s valet to never reveal his position as the king’s favourite, and though the stone-faced little man giving him orders irks Loki, he has found that such anonymity suits him well.

The common people of Asgard generally don’t care what transpires in the king’s bed on regular basis. Everyone well knows of the king’s appetites, but so long as nothing drastic happens, no one seems to pay it much mind. It’s the highborn who delve in the palace gossip, as they live closer to the courtly intrigue than an average Asgardian. There are some, Loki knows, who wouldn’t mind just a night or two with the king, and others, who wish to catch the king’s eye with aspirations to rise to the position of the royal consort. It’s these people who keep an eye – or attempt to do so – on the inhabitants of the palace, trying to find out who is the one currently occupying their king's bed, and making pathetic little plans to place themselves in their king's view at the right time.

Despite the secrecy around the king's bedwarmers, there are some individuals who have noticed that Loki appeared in court for no apparent reason and with no title. Were Loki’s position in Thor's bed less precarious, he would certainly flaunt it around regardless the valet's instructions. But the knowledge that you are but one of many, neither the first, nor the last, has a terribly dampening effect on smugness.

***

The rumours about Thor are untrue; he doesn't execute his past lovers. He simply casts them aside, sends them back into the lives he took them from and never spares them another thought. By the time the palace guards escort an abandoned lover to the gates, Thor has already enticed a new one into his bed.

Loki wouldn't have cared about execution; death he can always outwit. Thor’s indifference, however…

Loki would rather die than see himself replaced.

***

“You think he has an agenda of his own? Behind his queen’s back?”

Loki, sitting astride the back of Thor’s thighs, shrugs as he digs the heels of his palms into the muscle of Thor’s back. “I think he’s building more bridges than necessary for a simple trade agreement with Vanaheim alone.”

“Do you think Freya knows?”

“Perhaps not, but as far as I know, he isn’t disloyal to his queen. She might easily turn a blind eye on his machinations as a personal reward, so long as he achieves her goals. I’m simply saying that not all the terms he puts forward are for Freya’s benefit. I’d keep that in mind while weighing his demands.”

Thor hums thoughtfully and groans as Loki kneads his rock-hard shoulders. Kingship may have given Thor a regal bearing and every pleasure or delicacy he might think of, but it also gives him stiff necks and shoulders from sitting in councils and hearing petitioners for hours on end, and leaves deep lines on his forehead and heavy thoughts in his mind.

On those nights in particular he isn’t in the mood for Loki’s body; on those nights he simply falls into his bed and complains about stubborn lords and quarrelling councillors and sly emissaries. Loki listens to him, and offers clever remarks, and encourages Thor to vent it out of his system. Thor has taken to asking for his opinions more often, of late, and Loki has no qualms about providing them. He is good at blending in, and he doesn’t mind accidentally overhearing or glimpsing things not initially meant for him.

Besides, this way he will have something more to offer to Thor than his body alone.

Loki isn’t delusional. He knows his ass isn't special. It’s his tongue that is unrivalled. Any other body can distract the king and provide him pleasure, but only Loki can offer him reprieve from the weight of his crown. Only Loki can bring an outside view to the issues the king and his court have grown blinded to. Only Loki can weave his tales into his and Thor’s passion, so that one night it’s a pirate sampling his stolen goods, and another it's a stable hand kissing his first innocent love in a haystack. And only Loki's endless stories can whisk the king from the palace and into faraway lands for a night, so that in the morning Thor will feel as though he were on an actual escapade himself.

Loki learnt at a young age to clutch to any advantage he might get. When he spins his stories, he always takes care to go on until Thor falls asleep, or dawn interrupts him. Thor is a straightforward man; he likes resolve, and so Loki never gives it to him when the night ends.

It’s a weak insurance, but Loki knows these nights are finite. If this is how he can keep stealing one more, he will continue doing so as long as he can.

“What happened to the betrayed king?” Thor asks him later, thumbs digging pleasantly into the sole of Loki’s foot while his eyes flit to the paling sky and back to Loki.

Loki stretches luxuriously, drowsy after the thorough massage Thor gave him. He grins at the king impishly, kisses his brow, and leaves.

***

Sometimes Loki sees Thor from afar: how he laughs at the high table during dinner, how he sometimes joins his warriors in training, how he entertains some hopeful lords’ daughters in the Queen’s garden. There are times Loki enjoys subtly teasing Thor across half a garden or a hall, but of late such games have left him sour more often than not. They all end the same way: something else claims Thor's attention, and Loki must wait for the night to bask in it again.

This is why Loki averts his eyes from Thor when he glimpses him in the Queen's garden, walking with an elven emissary. Their arms are linked; Thor is smiling at something she said.

Loki slips away before either of them see him.

He loves the garden. Excessive greenery is something he had always troubles to imagine back on Jotunheim, and all the scents and colours still have his head spinning at times. He likes to venture into the garden on lazy afternoons and nap in its quieter, more secluded parts, where there is shade and fountains to soothe the sometimes stifling heat of Asgardian summer. During his stay in the palace he has managed to map out all the quietest spots for specifically this purpose – little pathways behind blossoming trees and thick hedges that nobody else seems to be aware of.

He makes use of these secret paths now, too, to have Thor out of his sight and to be out of Thor's. If only extracting him from his thoughts were as easy.

Loki finds himself a quiet spot in the shade, sighing as he settles against an apple tree. He closes his eyes and lets his mind wander.

He thinks of the late queen Frigga. It’s by her hands that the garden was initially built and tended to. Thor once told Loki that her garden has always been his safe haven, and from what Loki has understood, it is so not least because of the influence of the queen mother on her son. She rarely comes up in their conversation, but Loki has already gathered that the queen was, and continues to be, a figure of great importance and stability to her son. After her passing, Thor opened parts of her well-loved garden to visitors, to honour his mother and to share her calming influence on a heavy heart.

Perhaps it's that same influence that keeps luring Loki in every few days, too.

He is shaken out of his thoughts by a servant he doesn’t recall encountering before. He cracks his eye open when her shadow falls on him, and she quickly schools her curious expression into a neutral one as she declares that by the king’s request, Loki is to follow her to the king’s private pavilion.

There is no choice but to obey. Loki follows the servant with his eyes cast low and his cheeks growing warm. The path to Thor's pavilion goes through the public area, and Loki practically feels curious eyes on him as he is led through a graceful little gate to the king’s private part of the garden. He curses silently Thor’s sudden indiscretion. What the king does in his chambers is one thing, but openly frolicking with bedwarmers during daytime is considered simply improper. Jealous tongues won’t waste time at spreading rumours of Loki’s ill influence on their king, and Thor’s stupid stone-faced valet will hear them and relay them to Thor, and then Thor will decide that Loki is more trouble than he is worth, and every night Loki has managed to steal in Thor’s bed will be reclaimed.

But of course Thor doesn’t think about that. He simply waves the servant away and engulfs Loki in his thick arms before the girl is even fully out of sight.

“Why do you always hide from me, my Loki? I know you saw me earlier.”

He isn’t serious, not with that playful pout of his, but Loki is. He slaps the king's arms off him. “Because you’re a king who doesn’t seem to understand the boundaries of propriety in his own kingdom!”

“What’s the point of being a king if I can’t even indulge myself a little?” Thor asks and Loki can’t answer him, because in theory he agrees entirely when it isn’t his head on the block, and because Thor’s hands are already back, climbing underneath his tunic.

It was in this same garden where Loki caught Thor’s eye in the first place. This same pavilion where his fate was sealed.

He visited the garden on his third day since his arrival in Asgard. The first he spent on the market place, the second browsing in the great library, which is where he heard of the beauty of the Queen’s garden – and on the third he decided to see it for himself.

He still doesn’t know why Thor singled him out on that day. He was but a face among many, wandering among the shrubbery, wondering at the impossibly lush plant life and the imaginative fountains. He was in the middle of searching for the statue depicting the queen herself when a servant stopped right in front of him and, without much preamble, demanded that he followed.

Loki did. He was half curious, half anxious – he feared the king had somehow discovered that he is Laufey’s son, and intended to interrogate him or to even send him back to Jotunheim. But the part of him where his curiosity resides was excited: he was about to see the famed king, the centre of so many differing rumours. The same king whose handsome profile Loki had reluctantly admired on a statue in the library just a day before.

Somehow, Loki had expected an older man, for whatever reason. Not the relatively young king whose likeness in the library had done him no justice at all. And Loki certainly hadn’t expected an onslaught of honeyed words and heated gazes, all aimed at him with deadly precision. The king asked for Loki’s name, and what had brought him to the garden that day, and then he took Loki’s hands into his own and began reciting some romantic epic – or so Loki first assumed until he realised that it was no poem, but the king wooing him, wrapping him in velvety words and burning through his reservations with that intriguing gaze. He spoke to Loki like Loki imagined kings spoke to their queens – or then to their courtesans, to whose capricious hearts they were trying to appeal.

And Loki-- Loki had only just left Jotunheim, his cold home where he had rarely been treated with kindness and never with desire. Thor’s powerful presence so near to Loki had air catching in his throat, and Thor’s burning kiss on his knuckles set Loki’s blood aflame. Thor’s eyes on Loki’s had his knees buckling, and he was robbed of any chance to reject the proposition so sweetly made to him. He simply wasn't prepared, and even though the rumours of the discarded lovers flickered in Loki’s mind, he easily disregarded them.

Why not? Why deny himself a chance for pleasure? He had lain with lovers only a few times before, when he had deemed the occasional dignitaries visiting Laufey’s court pleasant enough to touch him. Loki would be mad to deny himself now, with the most wanted man in the entire Nine on his knees in front of him, praising his beauty, promising him gold and jewellery and finest silks, and, most importantly, looking at him like he wanted to devour Loki. Yes, he would have to be quite mad, quite mad indeed. Mad – or prudent, but Loki had never cared for prudent much.

It was that kiss on his knuckles that finally sealed Loki’s answer. Hot lips felt like a brand on his skin, the hint of tongue dizzying. The king told Loki that he could say no, and Loki, in turn, finally understood why no one had before. He said yes.

It was exhilarating. Loki’s head was reeling with the turn his life had suddenly taken. A night or three in the king’s bed – he could certainly think of worse ways to pass a few days.

He never planned falling in love with Thor. But now, with Thor pushing him against a pillar in his personal pavilion in broad daylight, Loki thinks that he might have done so, anyway.

***

Thor is Loki’s come night, but it doesn’t mean that Thor is _Loki’s._ Ultimately, Thor belongs to Asgard and to her people first, and even then, there will once be a legal consort to have Thor. It’s unfair, because Thor has Loki completely.

He has Loki on his belly, pressing Loki’s hands into the mattress, palms up so he can twine their fingers together as he rocks into Loki. Loki hasn’t seen as much of the universe as he would like to, but he can tell with certainty that this is his favourite place in it: pressed between Thor and the mattress, Thor’s grunts tickling his ear, Thor around him, on him, in him. It’s a bliss with no comparison, something Loki never deemed possible while he still lived in Jotunheim. It’s so good Loki wants to cry, and when he does, Thor kisses his tears like they were worthy of the king’s goblet at the high table.

That night, Loki begins a different story.

_There once was a prince, who was born into a world he didn’t belong in. The prince was shunned by his kin and his people, and, one night, he discovered that the crown, his by birthright, was to fall to his younger brother instead, while he himself was to face a tragic accident. And so the prince, that very same night, took his cloak and bid silent farewell to the world that was his home no more. He slipped away through a secret passage only he knew of, and found himself in the kingdom of his realm’s sworn enemies. But instead of leaving and finding himself another place somewhere safer, as would have been prudent, the prince disguised himself, and decided to build a life for himself amongst his enemies. They could be no worse, the prince thought, than the people he had considered his kin and who would rather murder him than accept him as one of their own._

“No, Loki,” Thor cries, and a gentle grip around his wrist stops Loki as the dawn yet breaks and he makes to roll out of bed.

“I will continue the story when I return tonight,” Loki promises, trying to disentangle the fingers engulfing his wrist.

Thor’s grip is unrelenting, but his voice is pleading. “Loki, I’m not asking for the story. I only wish for your company.”

“You have duties to attend to.”

“Break fast with me.”

Loki’s head whips around. “You jest,” he says blandly.

“I do not.”

Loki twists his wrist free and rolls out of bed before Thor catches him again. He snatches his clothing from the heap on the floor and begins to pull his leggings on with vicious tugs. He keeps his back to Thor.

“Loki…”

Loki ignores him. Thor must be aware of the implications of his suggestion. He must understand that this is not a mere fancy of a man who is used to getting everything he thinks to want. What Thor is suggesting goes far deeper than that.

The king of Asgard is a public figure. The moment he sets his foot out of his private quarters, he is Asgard’s. He eats his lunch with his councillors or notable guests of the court. He eats his dinner at the high table in the feasting hall, under the eyes of every warrior and noble family of Asgard.

The only time of the day the king has to himself, aside the night, is morning. Kings eat their breakfast with their family. With their consorts. The breakfast table is the sacred heart of a king’s private life.

It's not a place for the king’s bedwarmer. Thor must know this.

“Stay,” Thor says from the bed. “Please.”

Loki stills, his tunic bundled in his hands. He fights the urge to cry. “If you aren’t jesting,” he says, hardening his tone with sheer anger and bitterness welling up inside him, “you are purposefully mocking me.”

He hears rustling and then bare feet on the floor. He doesn’t turn.

“Loki. You must know -”

“I do know!” Loki whirls around to hurl the tunic at Thor’s face. The bundle hits its mark, but flutters to the floor with unsatisfying floppiness. “I _know_ my place! Certainly far better than you!”

Thor faces him in his naked glory, infuriatingly calm and collected, although Loki can see the tightening of his jaw. “And what is your place, Loki?”

“Your bed,” Loki hisses with venom, resorting to throwing words now that his hands are empty. “ _Not_ your breakfast table.”

“And who’s to decide with who I’ll share my table?” Thor snaps back.

Loki can only gape, for a moment. Thor must be acting obstinate on purpose. “By your own traditions!”

“I never took you for one to bow to tradition.”

Loki snatches his tunic from the floor and pulls it on with jerky motions. He cannot say what has him so distraught – not to Thor, barely even to himself. Not the deepest truth of it, so he settles for the secondary reasons, all equally true. “You will make yourself and your future queen a laughing stock. She will always know that she is no more special than your favourite bedwarmer – that I’ve had her place in her king’s bed and her seat at his table, and the moment your servants catch me in a consort’s place, you will always be known as the king who lets pleasure rule his head and who has no more regard for his queen than for his whores.”

Thor regards him silently, and Loki grits his teeth. He shouldn’t have reacted so strongly. Thor shouldn’t have brought the whole issue up. He turns to leave. “This is ridiculous. This charade has gone on for too long.”

“No!” Thor grabs his hand, turns him around and holds him in place with a desperate grip and frantic eyes. “Loki, what are you saying?”

“I’m tired of you,” Loki spits. Thor’s face blurs in front of him, and it only angers him further. “I’m tired of you! I’ve had enough of being your whim. I’ve-- I’ve had enough of--” He pushes Thor’s hands off his shoulders and wipes at his eyes. “I’ll stay in your bed, but don’t think for one moment that I’ll sit as a replacement for your queen or any other wretch that follows me. I am not your consort, and I won’t let you make such mockery of me.”

“Oh, Loki.” Thor brushes his face, smears the wetness all over Loki’s cheek. “Don’t you know? You haven’t been a whim for me for months. You’re not a replacement. You are you. You are only you to me.” He tugs at Loki’s hand gently, pulls him into an embrace. Loki, powerless to resist, goes.

“Stay. Please. Eat breakfast with me.”

Oh, how Loki wishes he had enough self-control to tear himself from Thor’s arms and the entire palace. But he doesn’t. He has never been able to choose wisely for himself.

When Thor’s valet leads Loki back to his rooms near the noon that day, for the first time his silence hangs heavy and judging between them. Loki pretends he doesn’t care.

***

_The prince fared well in the foreign land. He settled among the common people, intent on building a new life there. No one knew who he was, for in his disguise, he was but another face among the many, simply one of the crowd. And that realisation shook the prince, for he understood that he felt he belonged in his ancient enemy’s world better than he ever belonged in his own. He thought he could be happy there._

_But soon after his arrival in the realm, the king of that realm caught sight of the prince. He didn’t recognise the prince for his enemy’s son, either, and he… he fell in love with him._

_He began to court the prince. He gifted him luxurious fabrics and rare jewels. He spoke sweet words of passion and love. He swore to fulfil every wish of his beloved, so long as it was within his power. He couldn’t eat or sleep, for the prince was constantly on his mind, and the king’s heart knew nothing but yearning for him._

_But the prince was torn. He knew that the king loved him because he didn’t know the truth – that should the king discover his true heritage, the prince would be executed as a traitor. He knew this, but he could not close his mind and his heart from the king’s honeyed words and tender touches. And so, despite his better judgement, he grew to love the king, not for the crown, but for the man he was. He gave himself to the king completely, body and soul, and for a time, he was happy._

_But false happiness couldn’t last. The prince knew that the king needed a consort, and he knew that it couldn’t be him. No king could elevate someone of common stature to his side, and should the king discover the prince’s royal blood, he would have him seized by his guards and sent away, or executed. And so the king’s gentle touches turned into knives cutting through the prince’s heart, and his honeyed words turned into poison that seeped into the prince’s blood._

_He couldn’t bear to remain, and he couldn’t bear to leave, and so, tired of the charade, one day he finally went to the king and revealed the truth._

Loki quiets. He hears Thor sit up behind him on the bed.

Thor’s voice is barely audible when he speaks. “What happens then?”

Loki closes his eyes. It’s just a fairy tale, and one of his own making besides. He can give it whatever ending he likes. It doesn’t matter, anyway.

“What you’d expect would happen. The king howls in rage and betrayal, and his guards seize the prince. Normally an enemy trespassing in the king’s realm is a crime punishable by death, but the king’s heart, though it is wounded, is soft. He spares the prince’s life and exiles him from his realm, forbidding him from ever returning under the threat of an axe. And the prince goes, and the king hardens his heart so that he will never feel betrayal again. He will only take lovers for one night, and behead them in the morning, so that his own heart will remain safe. He will never love again, and he and the prince both die alone in the end.”

There is silence for a long time after Loki ends his tale. Thor says nothing, and Loki gazes out of the window at the yielding darkness. It’s his last dawn here, he knows.

“Loki...”

Loki isn’t sure if Thor touches a finger between his shoulder blades or if he imagines it, but he stands quickly out of the king’s reach and pulls his tunic on, finds his leggings. He doesn’t look at Thor, who stays in the bed, quiet. Thor doesn’t reach out. Doesn’t call for Loki, doesn’t stop him when Loki leaves his chambers without a look back.

Loki sleeps that whole day. He doesn’t even bother washing or changing his clothes. He simply falls into bed and sleeps, and when he wakes, he forces himself back into sleep again.

Only when the sun begins its slow descend into the waters does Loki finally rise; it won’t be long now that he will be sent for. He washes and changes into the clothes in which he came into this realm and in which Thor first took notice of him. Not as if any of it had any sentimental value to him. Whether it has such value to Thor, Loki hardly wants to know.

He is a fool. A weak, sentimental fool. He should never have begun that story.

When the sky darkens, Loki hears the clanking of heavy boots outside his door. The soldiers have finally come for him, too.

He doesn’t look back when they escort him out. He has never felt any connection or entitlement to that room, nor for the gifts Thor showered on him. Not now, anyway, when, one way or another, it comes to an end.

Surprisingly, instead of the throne room where prisoners are judged, the guards take Loki to the king’s chambers. They halt him in the antechamber, standing behind him like marble statues, and wait.

The king stands by one of the windows of the antechamber, his back to the door and to Loki. He is watching the grey clouds gathering on the sky, or perhaps he’s calling them. He turns when the door closes. Loki keeps his gaze on the king’s chest.

“I apologise for the manner in which you were summoned,” Thor says. Straight to the point without much preamble, as usual. “But certain precautions must be made, until some questions have been cleared.”

“Of course.”

Thor’s face tightens. He doesn’t appear to be angry, per se, but Loki’s listless answer seems to have confirmed something he didn’t want to be true.

“Answer me this: who are you?”

Loki swallows. He started this. He knew perfectly well that he was sawing the branch he was sitting on when he began that stupid story. Norns know what pulled his tongue to do it, but now that it’s done, there is no backing down.

He closes his eyes and takes a moment to hope that none of the guards will spear him on reflex when they see who he is. He focuses on his Aesir form and lets the magic melt away, starting at the head, where the Aesir shape begins dribbling down and revealing his true self underneath – his skin, and Laufey’s marks on it. He opens his eyes and lets Thor see the red of them, too, though he doesn’t dare look up.

One of the guards gasps behind him.

Stunned silence reigns in the room, until Thor breaks it.

“Loki. Loki _Laufeyson_.”

Loki never told him any lies, not directly, but his lie lives in the truth he kept to himself, and he knows that to Thor, that makes little difference. The soldiers behind him don’t move, but Loki can sense the shift in their restless demeanour.

“Yes,” he answers to Thor.

Thor’s demeanour shifts subtly, too. Again, Loki feels it even without looking directly at his face.

“And why has a son of Laufey ventured into my kingdom in such secrecy?”

In all his time in Asgard, Loki has not talked with the _king_. He has spent his time in Thor’s company; the king belongs to the throne room and to the council meetings, not to his bed chambers, where Thor used to belong to Loki. Now, however, Loki stands before the king of Asgard and the overlord of the Nine Realms. In Thor’s chambers he may be, but he has been brought in for judgement by the king.

“Perhaps Your Majesty remembers the tale I last told you. Necessity made me leave Jotunheim. I chose Asgard on a whim.” And how Loki curses his whims now. He has never been able to do what’s best for him. He should have gone to Vanaheim, or Alfheim perhaps, and be spared this whole charade.

“You did not come with the intention of slithering into the king’s trust for your own or your realm's purposes?”

Loki lowers his gaze to the floor, so the king might not see his eyes. “Your Majesty chose me among the many himself.”

The king stays silent for a time. Then he raises his hand and gestures for the guards to leave. No doubt they will remain just behind the door, ready to act should their king need them.

As soon as the doors close, the king strides towards Loki. He grabs Loki’s hands, never minding that they are blue. “Loki,” Thor says. His voice is anguished. “Is that story true? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Loki still can’t find it in himself to look up, so he looks at Thor’s hands enveloping his instead. Thor’s hands are warm; _Thor_ is warm, and he’s standing far too close to Loki’s comfort.

“Surely Your Majesty unde-”

Thor growls. “Stop that. Stop speaking as though we were strangers.”

What is the point, Loki wants to ask him, but inhales and tries again. “Surely you understand why I wouldn’t tell you such a thing. If you had known I’m Jotun -”

“Not that.” Thor squeezes his hands, voice turning softer. “Why didn’t you tell me that you felt like that with me? That-- that my company had become unbearable to you?”

Fool, fool, _fool_. He should never have told that story. He should never have told Thor any of it.

“What would have been the point?” he asks, bitterness creeping into his voice.

“Is it true? Is everything that you told me in that story true?”

Loki shrugs. “I can’t speak for the king. As for the-- the prince…”

He can’t bring himself to say it, and Thor doesn’t push him – he no doubt reads the answer in the stretching silence. Instead Thor asks, “Then why did you choose such a sad ending?”

Loki yanks his hands free in a flash of anger and finally raises his eyes to glare at Thor. “Because that’s all the ending there is!”

“Beheading or exile? Truly?”

Loki doesn’t answer. Thor continues, “And what of the third possibility?”

“There is none.”

Thor cocks his brow. “Isn’t there? To me, it seems the most obvious one. If the king loved the prince so much, surely he would rather bind their hands in marriage now that the prince’s royal blood is revealed? Isn’t marriage between realms a tradition of old?”

Loki cannot speak. He can only stare at Thor and wonder what game he's playing, what he thinks to achieve by pestering Loki so with something that won’t be.

“Loki,” Thor says, and now there is sadness in his voice. “How can you be so sharp about everyone else in the court, but so wilfully blind about this? Why won’t you believe my love for you?”

Loki avoids Thor’s gaze – he will not show his weakness. “And how long will your love last, Thor? How long for me, when it ended so swiftly with all the others?”

“It never ended with the others,” Thor says. “There never was love with the others. It has never been love with anyone else, Loki. Only you.”

He reaches for Loki again, brushes his cheek with aching tenderness. “I have only ever loved you.”

“I am Jotun,” Loki argues. He’s not even sure what he keeps fighting, exactly, he only knows that if he lets go, he will fall into something strange and deep and completely unfamiliar to him, and it frightens him. “I’m your father’s enemy and your enemy’s son. All this time I haven’t been who you believed I was.”

“You are,” Thor says. Slowly, carefully he takes Loki’s hands into his own once more. “You are exactly who I believed you to be: you are Loki, who I fell in love with, and now that I know you are also Loki of Jotunheim and of royal blood, I don’t even need to change our laws to marry you. I will make you my consort without delay, if only you’ll have me.”

“What?” Loki’s head is reeling, but Thor’s hold on him is warm, secure. He’s not angry. The king is not angry.

His face is serious when he looks at Loki. “You are everything a king might want by his side, Loki. You are of royal blood. You have proved your quick wit and resourcefulness by making a king discard his habits and come to you night after night, until that alone was no longer enough. Your silver tongue is quick and sharp and able to make a man believe it and want to hear more. You have listened to my complaints and given me wiser and more insightful counsel than my own councillors. You have taken my mind off my worries and lightened my crown. With all your talents and your symbolic asset of being the prince of Jotunheim, your presence at my court and by my side would be invaluable to this realm.

But.”

He slides his palm to Loki’s neck. “None of that matters to me. Most of all, Loki, I want you as my lifelong companion not as the king, but as a man who has grown to love you like no other. I care not for my court’s approval. I care not for your royal blood or your political value. I only care to have you, Loki, by my side, as my queen and my consort, as the other half of my otherwise lacking heart – for you already are all that to me in every way that matters. During the day I cannot rip my thoughts from you. Every morning when you leave my chambers I already await the night, to have you by my side again, to hear your voice and feel your warmth, to share my soul. I love you, Loki, deeply and desperately, and I wish to spend my life by your side, striving to become to you what you have been to me, until we close our eyes to once again open them together in eternity.”

He stops, palm still cupping Loki’s neck so Loki cannot look away, and gazes into Loki’s eyes as if waiting for an answer.

Loki doesn’t give it. He cannot. He, who Thor but a moment earlier described a quick-witted silvertongue, finds himself utterly and helplessly tongue-tied in the face of Thor’s exhaustive confession. His vision darkens at the edges, so that all he can see is Thor and his earnest, warm eyes. His throat is dry, and not a sound comes out – and yet, absurdly, his eyes grow moist.

Thor swipes at the corner of Loki’s eye with his thumb. He asks, softly, gently, “Will you be mine, Loki, and let me be yours in turn?”

It’s a simple question, far easier to process than the eloquent confession, and Loki is grateful for it. “Yes,” he says, and says no more, for Thor closes him into a tight embrace so that Loki can barely breathe, let alone speak. For that, too, he is grateful; there will be time for words later.

For now, he lets himself be enveloped in Thor's arms and led to the bed. He lets Thor make sweet love to him through the night, and when the night sky begins to pale with the waking dawn, Loki closes his eyes and sleeps past it.

 

*

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I started this with the full intention to make this nothing but salacious sex with minimal plot. Yet here we are. Be that as it may, I do think that Thorki falls into the King and Scheherazade tale perfectly, and it's not that I'm hinting at anything, but should someone else write their own version of it, I would be more than delighted to read it!
> 
> Loki's story about the king and his foster brother is a slightly adapted version of two characters in Game of Thrones.
> 
> While writing I listened a lot to [this album by Loreena McKennitt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMSb3Jldajg).
> 
> The gorgeous photoset in the beginning of the story is made by the wonderful [Estivate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estivate/pseuds/Estivate) / [Summertudinal](https://summertudinal.tumblr.com/post/185117777621/salakavala7-you-can-find-this-king-and). <3 Also please go have a look at MissLee's beautiful ficlet "Blue Bird" - I like to imagine that it's one of the tales Loki has told Thor. :)  
> ALSO please go look at this incredible art by [Raccoonsito](https://twitter.com/RaccoonBuebito/status/1132728955197202433) on twitter and give them all the love, please.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Any thoughts would be appreciated beyond words. <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Blue Bird](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18895444) by [MissLee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissLee/pseuds/MissLee)




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